UKC

When I say diet I dont mean to diet, I just mean the normal diet of a person.

Theres loads of conflicting advice which changes with the weather seemingly, should we be on a low carb, low fat, high protein, low protein, low sugar, high fruit, gluten free, vegitarian, dairy free......

GAH!

Some peoples seem to do well with little or no meat such as in india, others do well mostly on fish and meats i.e. near the arctic circle. There are vegans who become ultra marathon runners, body builders etc.

I pre empt some peoples responses just saying - stick to a balanced diet, yes well what is a 'balanced' diet? how much of one thing or the other?

The digestive system is a pretty amazing system that can produce what the body needs from a vast array of foods but some foods cause health problems for some people in the long term i.e. celiac disease, milk intolerance etc etc.

So, what have the lovely populus of UKC got to say on this?

In reply to ow arm:

I was on the larger and lime last night and right now I could murder a kebab!

In reply to ow arm:
I'm not sure they do do well on mainly meat and fish, like in Greenland, I heard a nutritionist talking about them having a terrible diet. They don't die out as it were, but I understand that there are health problems they have which are diet related.

In reply to ow arm:

If you were stuck out in the wilds think about what kind of food you'd eat. Undoubtedly meat - and you'd eat pretty much ALL the animal - organs as well as muscle. You'd eat seasonal fruit and veg. Some days you'd eat more than others depending on what you could get that day. So there is your starter for ten; real food (you know it when you see it), nutritionally complete, some days eating more than others (generally more on a training day).

Vegans who become ultra marathon runners, body builders etc... are normally eating lots of highly processed food to fill deficiencies in their diet.

Highly refined foods are often stripped of vitamins and minerals in processing. I avoid such acellular foods as adding nutrients in at a later date ignores issues of bioavailablilty. Stuff that has a massive shelf life I also avoid.

In reply to ow arm:

A couple of interesting diety articles. Not really answers to your question, but things that might interest you if you are musing over this stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29629761
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain?utm_source=tny&utm_c...

For some reason that link looks odd, hope it works

In reply to ow arm:

I don't really like fish.

But every day for the last year (ish) ,I have made a point of eating a tin of sardines.

Nutritionally ,I would like to think it has helped.

On the whole ,I just eat a fairly standard diet.dont deprive myself of anything ,but try not to eat too many choccy biscuits .and keep sugar in tea etc to a minimum.

Last year I was doing 20 miles cycling a night ,and keeping (stupidly) to a 2500 calorie diet.

Now on about 3500cals a day (more pasta and meat) . 3 or 4 pounds heavier ,just as fit ,and more toned.

And...... Much healthier.

In reply to ow arm:

Random stuff in, or not in, our house.

We have no fruit juice, little pasta, no fizzy soft drinks, no margerine/spreadable-vegetable, no low fat anything, no reduced this or that, no sugary breakfast cereals, no ready meals, no crisps.

We do eat Dairy, meat, fish, vegetables, porridge, decent bread, salad, pulses, honey, nuts. Alcohol, condiments, spices, pickles. Rice. Baked Beans. Chillies.

We cook a lot.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

And fart a lot?

In reply to Mudflap:

Eh!?

Do you have a diet that prevents farting, I don't really get where you are coming from.

In reply to ow arm:

It's all very well to moan about unhelpful advice (which is mostly just the papers desperately scrabbling around for stories), but imagine you were the king of all science. You have a million pounds to find out whether eating more or less carbs is better for your long-term health. What are you going to do with it?

The problem is that people are fundamentally complicated and we (unhelpfully from a scientific perspective) eat diets which vary between people and over time. So how can you possibly isolate the impact of any one component of diet from all of the other things which people are eating. And that's before you start to think about all of the other things which affect a person's health (exercise, drinking, smoking etc etc). It's basically impossible.

Nobody's ever going to be able to tell you what the 'optimal' diet is for you. Or even what the right amount of salt/meat/protein/fish/whatever is to eat.

In reply to the OP:

A quick Google for food pyramid is a good place to start, I recon. Personally I don't have that great a diet, I feel like I'm winning if I don't put more than 5 items of junk food in the trolly, manage to get 3-4 fruit and veg per day and cook a basic meal every second evening at least. I don't eat much meat usually. I have a sneaking suspicion that my ancestors spent a lot more time eating fruit and veg than meat because you don't have to chase it all over the bloody shop before you can eat it.


In reply to victim of mathematics:


There is a huge amount of data out there which can be used to reduce bias introduced through "lifestyle factors" like smoking, etc. Very large surveys also help to average out other variations which could bias your result.
There will be a box of tricks about 20 years wide and 100 experts long which I know almost nothing of but which can be brought to bear when there is a need to study one thing and exclude the effects of all others. It isn't easy but it certainly can be done.

In reply to henwardian:

I understand how epidemiology works, thanks. But how do you categorise diet into a finite number of discrete variables in order to analyse the data? That depends on the question and whether you're looking at broad categories like carbohydrates or specific ones like processed meats. And where does your data come from? If you ask people what they eat they can't remember very well and they usually say they eat a healthier diet than they really do. What you need is data on what people actually ate for every meal over their whole lives, and where are you going to get that from?

The fundamental problems are that there is huge variation between individuals (I don't eat the same as you) and within individuals (I don't eat the same today as I did yesterday, and I eat quite differently in general to how I ate 10 years ago) and there are substantial time lags between eating the food and fleeing the health effects (if I have fat-clogged arteries that isn't just because I ate a burger last Tuesday). So the analysis is incredibly complex and the results always disputable (there's always something you didn't control for that might have affected the results).

If I can use an example from my field, alcohol, which is simpler than diet in many ways, the world's leading scientists can still not agree whether drinking at a low level has a protective effect on heart disease risk, or whether people who drink at low levels are just generally healthier than those who drink more or don't drink at all. This is in spite of huge studies following millions of people over long periods of time.

By all means, prove me wrong by proposing a study design which can get over these many problems. You never know, there might be a noble prize in it for you...